This application relates to a process for manufacturing and packaging ice cream, and to an improved ice cream package for use in the process.
Ice cream containers range from paper, cardboard, plastic, or composites of these materials such as plastic coated paper, that are shaped in bricks, tubs, or rounds. Packages will range in size from pint, quart, half-gallon, gallon, five quart, and three gallon sizes.
Typically, ice cream is manufactured by mixing liquid ingredients in a mixing tank and feeding the mixed ingredients into a cooling unit where the mixture is reduced in temperature to about 20° F. The mixture becomes significantly more viscous, but is still flowable. If the flavor being manufactured includes solid items such as cookie parts, the solid items are mixed into the flowing material at this point. The chilled and fully mixed material is fed to a package filling machine which feeds the material into an ice cream package. The ice cream package is closed and shrink wrapped to other packages for more convenient handling. The packaged ice cream is usually placed in a hardening area for several hours where its temperature is reduced to 0° F. or below. The packaged, finished ice cream is then ready to be stored or shipped.
An inventory of completed ice cream products is kept at a low temperature, around −10° F. to −20° F. As will be appreciated, hardening of the ice cream under conventional processes not only takes several hours, but is also capital intensive with regard to the equipment required to complete this process. For example, one method of hardening packaged ice cream is called a roller bed process. Ice cream packages are placed on a roller-type conveyor in a cold room where cold air is circulated by blowers. The ice cream containers are maintained in the cold room for ten to twelve hours where hardening occurs. Another system provides moving trays upon which ice cream is disposed, the trays move within the cold room and cold air is blown around the ice cream while it moves on these trays. The movement results in decreased hardening time, but still several hours are required to harden the ice cream to appropriate finished temperatures. Still another process to harden ice cream is with a contact plate hardener. A coolant is passed through aluminum plates reducing the temperature to a very low level. Packages of ice cream are fed into the contact plate freezer. Plates contact lower and upper surfaces of the packages while heat is extracted from the ice cream into the chilled aluminum plate. Plate freezers are efficient when used with packages having flat tops and bottoms which can be packed adjacent one another with side walls in direct contact. Contact plate freezers, therefore, are often useable with brick packages but are not as well suited to tubs.
Convenience also has an impact on consumer enjoyment of ice cream. For example, three dimensional (3-D) contours are often desired for decorative ice cream. However, the ability to prepare the ice cream in various 3-D shapes is constrained by the cost of the packaging. First, only certain types of material may be used since it must be of food grade quality where it contacts the ice cream directly. This limits the range of materials that can be used. Secondly, although various types of plastic or polymeric materials are desirable because of low cost, there are also constraints associated with the temperature ranges imposed on the packaging. Thus, there is a continued desire to have a food grade quality package that is a thin layer and permitted to be molded into 3-D shapes along at least one surface, and still provides an easy-open package for the consumer.